Famous Teachers a to z

Psychologist Clark L. Hull performed a study and produced the dominant learning theory of the 1940s and 1950s, that learning was based on “habit strength."

Award-winning, bestselling American novelist John Irving is known for works like The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp.

Stonewall Jackson was a leading Confederate general during the U.S. Civil War, commanding forces at Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

Philip Johnson was an American architect best known for the design for his own home, the Glass House, in New Canaan, CT.

Lois Mailou Jones was a painter whose works reflect a command of widely varied styles, from traditional landscape to African-themed abstraction.

Daniel J. Boorstin was a writer and historian known for his Americans trilogy and The Discoverers.

First female politician,attorney to serve as solicitor general of the United States of America.

Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky is credited as a leader in avant-garde art as one of the founders of pure abstraction in painting in the early 20th century.

American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the ACLU.

Biologist Alfred Kinsey wrote Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was based on research he and his colleagues conducted at the Institute for Sex Research.

Paul Klee was a prolific Swiss and German artist best known for his large body of work, influenced by cubism, expressionism and surrealism.

Julia Kristeva is a psychoanalyst, critic and novelist, known for her writings in structuralist linguistics, psychoanalysis and philosophical feminism.

Stanley Kunitz was an American poet who served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1974; 2000). He won the Pulitzer Prize for his work Selected Poems 1928-1958 (1958).

Rita Levi-Montalcini shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for her part in the discovery of a protein that stimulates nerve cell growth.

Actor, writer and producer James Lipton founded the Actors Studio Drama School and has hosted Bravo TV's Inside the Actors Studio since 1994.

Franz Liszt was a Hungarian pianist and composer of enormous influence and originality. He was renowned in Europe during the Romantic movement.

Mary Lyon was an educator and founder of the first women's college, which is now known as Mount Holyoke College.

Alfred Thayer Mahan was an American naval officer and historian who was an exponent of sea power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Horace Mann was an American politician and education reformer, best known for promoting universal public education and teacher training in "normal schools."

U.S. Psychologist Abraham Maslow was a practitioner of humanistic psychology. He is known for his theory of “self-actualization.”

Robert C. Maynard was a journalist and publisher best known for being the first African American to own and publish a major daily newspaper (Tribune).

Architect Thom Mayne helped found the architectural design firm Morphosis, and co-founded the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).

Ornithologist Ernst Mayr demonstrated that the development of separate species in higher animals depends on the geographical isolation of precursor populations.

High school teacher Christa McAuliffe was the first American civilian selected to go into space. She died in the space shuttle Challenger’s explosion in 1986.

Cindy McCain is an Arizona businesswoman, a philanthropist who works with international nonprofit organizations, and the wife of U.S. Senator John McCain.

American politician Eugene J. McCarthy challenged Lyndon B. Johnson in the race for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, which led to Johnson's withdrawal.

William McGuffey was a 19th-century educator remembered chiefly for his series of elementary readers.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French philosopher and man of letters, the leading exponent of phenomenology in France.

Abby Lee Miller, who runs a Pittsburgh dance studio, is known for her tirades and tough training as star of Lifetime TV's reality show Dance Moms.

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter, photographer and art teacher who took charge of the metal workshop of the Bauhaus.

Italian physician Maria Montessori was a pioneer of theories in early childhood education, which are still implemented in Montessori schools all over the globe.

Barbara Morgan was the first teacher-astronaut to complete a shuttle mission on board the Endeavor in 2007.

Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is a professor, author and media commentator who is executive director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Twice appointed the United States' poet laureate, Howard Nemerov was a writer with wit and illuminating irony.

In 1897, Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to a newspaper about the existence of Santa Claus and got the famous response, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

American author Robert Pirsig is best known for his philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974).

Louis Renault was a French jurist and educator and co-winner in 1907 of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

In 1983, astronaut and astrophysicist Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger. Ride died on July 23, 2012 at the age of 61, following a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Faith Ringgold is an American artist and author who became famous for innovative, quilted narrations like Tar Beach that communicate her political beliefs.

Max Roach was a jazz drummer and pioneer of the bebop style.

Augusta Savage is remembered as an artist, activist, and arts educator, serving as an inspiration to the many that she taught, helped, and encouraged.

Controversial radio host Laura Schlessinger, also known as "Dr. Laura," is an expert at giving listeners—and readers—a piece of her mind when it comes to moral living and leading a successful family life.

Franz Schubert is considered the last of the classical composers and one of the first romantic ones. Schubert's music is notable for its melody and harmony.

John Scopes is best known as the Tennessee teacher found guilty of breaking the law for teaching evolution in his class room.

Alice Sebold is an American writer and best-selling author of the book, The Lovely Bones, which has been hailed the most successful debut novel since Gone with the Wind.

Betty Shabazz is best known as the wife of African-American nationalist leader Malcolm X, who was assassinated in New York City in 1965.

Scottish social philosopher and political economist Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations and achieved the first comprehensive system of political economy.

Charlotta Spears Bass was a journalist and activist who, as editor of the California Eagle, championed African-American equality and freedom.

Rudolf Steiner was a lecturer and founder of anthroposophy. His works attempted to find a synthesis between science and mysticism.

Theater director Lee Strasberg co-founded the Group Theatre, where he directed experimental plays, and later became artistic director of the Actors Studio.

Anne Sullivan was a teacher who, at age 21, taught Helen Keller, who was deaf, mute, and blind, how to communicate and read Braille.

Mary Church Terrell was a charter member of the NAACP and an early advocate for civil rights and the suffrage movement.

Famed mathematician Alan Turing proved in his 1936 paper, "On Computable Numbers," that a universal algorithmic method of determining truth in math cannot exist.

Alexander Lucius Twilight is thought to be the first African American to graduate from an American university (Middlebury College, 1823).

Mona Jane Van Duyn was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and academic.

Antonio Vivaldi was a 17th and 18th century composer who’s become one of the most renowned figures in European classical music.

Elizabeth Warren is a Democrat from Massachusetts who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. She previously worked as an assistant to President Barack Obama and helped design the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among several other roles.

Educator Booker T. Washington was one of the foremost African-American leaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, founding the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, now known as Tuskegee University.

Max Weber was a 19th century German sociologist and one of the founders of modern sociology. He wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1905.

Simone Weil was a French intellectual, activist and Christian Mystic.

Pioneer author Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the autobiographical “Little House” kids’ book series, the basis of the popular television show Little House on the Prairie.